Audiobook22 hours
Favorite Wife: Escape From Polygamy
Written by Susan Ray Schmidt
Narrated by Susan Ericksen
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
She had no choice in the matter-none of the girls did. Her mission was to give birth to and raise many children in devoted service to a shared husband. Susan was fifteen years old when she became the sixth wife of Verlan LeBaron, one of the leaders of a rogue Mormon cult, who was engaged in a blood feud with his brother that from 1972 to 1988 claimed up to two dozen lives.
In this gripping and eloquent book, Susan Ray Schmidt tells the story of growing up on the inside and of her ultimate escape with her children from an oppressive and violent life. Delving more deeply into this mysterious underworld than any previous work, Favorite Wife is a powerful account of the affairs of the heart, coming of age under exceptional circumstances, and the tough choices that are sometimes painfully necessary to preserve human dignity.
Susan Ray Schmidt was once a member of the Church of the Firstborn of the Fullness of Times and the child-bride of polygamist Verlan LeBaron in Colonia LeBaron in Mexico. After eight years of marriage, she left her husband and fled with her five children back to America. She remarried three years later.
In this gripping and eloquent book, Susan Ray Schmidt tells the story of growing up on the inside and of her ultimate escape with her children from an oppressive and violent life. Delving more deeply into this mysterious underworld than any previous work, Favorite Wife is a powerful account of the affairs of the heart, coming of age under exceptional circumstances, and the tough choices that are sometimes painfully necessary to preserve human dignity.
Susan Ray Schmidt was once a member of the Church of the Firstborn of the Fullness of Times and the child-bride of polygamist Verlan LeBaron in Colonia LeBaron in Mexico. After eight years of marriage, she left her husband and fled with her five children back to America. She remarried three years later.
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Reviews for Favorite Wife
Rating: 4.081081121621621 out of 5 stars
4/5
74 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Honest, wonderfully written and gripping. I found myself searching for more as this telling is so well done
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What an eye opener as to what a woman can go through and still come out the other side.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent Read!! This lady has so much strength and courage
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I recommend reading this book before or after her sister wife's book, Irene Spencer. Both accounts the emphasis on an imature teen girl, with limited experience outside her religious community suddenly becomes a wife, among others and a mother, is compelling and real. In the last quarter of this book she describes in detail the solitary moments that she begins to question her entire life religion- of the family she grew up in and the one she married into, her research, and emerging autonomy, and final committed resolve to leave and stay away.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eye-opening story of a woman trapped in marriage and poverty with one of the LeBaron polygamists.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Susan Schmidt offers a harrowing account of the life of a woman born into a Mormon cult. Married to one of the cult's leaders, she speaks of the hardships faced by plural wives and their never ending children while the husbands are off doing other things. Hunger, jealousy, neglect and privation are commonplace for the women belonging to this group with members living in Mexico, America and Canada and often moving between communities in all three countries. When leadership fractures, Susan and her children are thrust into what ultimately becomes an extremely dangerous climate until she is able to remove herself into mainstream life and escape the clutches of the cult. The murders are touched upon, but mostly this is the story of Susan, her life, marriage and subsequent defection.